Travel can help heal the wounds of a war-ravaged land and give locals a renewed sense of optimism

Less than eight months after the civil war ended in Sri Lanka, in 2009, The New York Times put the island at the top of a list of 31 places to go in 2010: “While a few military checkpoints remain, vacationers can lounge on poolside hammocks under palm trees or snorkel in its crystal-clear waters.” It wasn’t just military checkpoints that remained, however. Relatives and friends were missing; areas of the north and east were mined; Sri Lanka was still fragile and fearful.

Five years on, the situation is still complicated. To be sure, tourists can travel through the north and east of Sri Lanka as they never could between 1983 and 2009, when the war raged. The highways are improving and luxury hotels are springing up. (I remember looking with longing, on the hotel’s website, at a photo of the seaside pool of the Chaaya Blu in Trincomalee, before deciding on something more modest.)

Today, deciding to travel to these parts can even be something of a moral attraction—a decision to spend money in places that could use the income, giving a fillip to their slow recovery. And perhaps, in the wake of war, tourism is inevitable. Isn’t travel for leisure, after all, a part of the normalcy that frazzled regions of the world crave? In the right circumstances, tourism can be redemptive and healing. A tourist’s eyes will see past the recent detritus of conflict and look afresh upon the deeper beauty of a land and its culture. The freedom of travel can indicate that other important freedoms are settling into place.

Soldiers in the Vietnam War. Photo: Martin Gershen

Tourists go now to the Balkans, after all, and to Vietnam and Nicaragua, and part of the success of these countries as destinations must lie in being able to convince visitors to look around and wonder: how did a war ever break out in such a beautiful land? I visited Sarajevo two years ago, for this magazine, and although that city wears its scars heavily, there is no doubt that they belong comprehensively to the past.

But Sri Lanka isn’t quite there yet. Not enough time has passed, and tension still pulses under its skin. My trip to Sarajevo, though, filled me with hope—that Sri Lanka, too, heals, and that I can finally go to Delft (also called Neduntheevu), one of a clutch of islands off the coast of Jaffna. The world is all sky and sea here, and the light holds a mystical quality. A local once told me that even during the war, everything seemed far away: the mainland, nationalism, politics. A friend told me that Delft was famous for its wild ponies, descendants of horses that had been abandoned by Dutch colonists in the late 1700s. I’ve had visions of Delft ever since: of the landscape sitting so close to the water; of the wind whipping through the palmyrahs; of those ponies running wild and free on the beaches of the island. To this day, I regret not visiting. Soon, I hope.

Samanth Subramanian’s new book, This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War (Rs499, Penguin Books) is on stands now.